Systems and methods herein generally relate to printers, and more particularly to printing devices that utilize decurlers.
The commercial inkjet printing (drop-on-demand) industry continues to be an area of growth, as printers and printing equipment manufacturers realize the value of personalized digital content. Companies engaging in the inkjet business look to increase overall ink and media latitude in their ink jet printing machines, particularly if their systems use nipped rolling surfaces.
For example, decurlers are used to reduce the amount of down-curl in the sheet prior to delivering the sheet to the stacker. Down-curl can be induced on the printed sheet by the image (particularly when a solid stripe of ink is printed on the lead-edge of a sheet). The indenting shaft in one decurler can be used to generate up-curl, and can be used to counter-act the down-curl that is induced by the printed image in an aqueous ink-jet marking engine. This function is a useful feature, particularly when the printed sheet is delivered to an in-line stacker, which has an input spec (limit) for curl.
Some printers develop ink buildup when operating under some paper and ink loading conditions. If ink buildup occurs on the indenting shaft of the decurler, this can cause sheet wrinkle in the decurler. Such excessive ink buildup in the decurler may mandate a service call (as often as every 10K prints) which is an unacceptable level of maintenance. In addition to the ink contamination on the decurler roller, the ink that is deposited onto decurler roller can then be re-deposited onto blank areas of the printed sheet, creating an unacceptable “ink offset” print defect.